As disclosed in copending applications Ser. No. 07/947,628 (Sabahi), Ser. No. 07/947,629 (Sabahi et al.-I), and Ser. No. 07/986,204 (Sabahi et al.-II):
(1) useful Michael addition products containing at least one, and preferably more than one, acceptor moiety per molecule can be prepared by reacting a dialkyl malonate with an alkyl acrylate in the presence of an initiator and a phase transfer catalyst, and PA1 (2) it was believed that making the Michael acceptor, i.e., the acrylate, the last of the ingredients to be charged to the reaction vessel permitted better control of the reaction temperature and, therefore, improved direction of the reaction to the formation of a desired product.
Sabahi and Sabahi et al. show that the above-described process is capable of providing Michael addition products containing more than one acceptor moiety per molecule. As demonstrated in their working examples, however, the process requires the use of a considerable stoichiometric excess of the acceptor to provide any substantial number of molecules containing at least three acceptor moleties. Moreover, this process employing the large excess of acceptor suffers from long reaction times and lack of reproducibility, and the product compositions are ill defined.